the raw reality of an introvert in her 20s

2017 Resolutions

Resolutions are weird, right? Resolutions have people going to the gym or eating healthy for a week, or doing something else that sounds wack. My perspective of it is that people create resolutions of goals that they want to achieve at some point in their life, but they don’t make it realistic enough, and they don’t break their resolutions down. Going to the gym? Great. How many times a week? What are you specifically working on? Eating healthy? Good for you. Are there certain foods you’re cutting out, and some you’re not? Make a list, and put it somewhere on a wall to constantly remind yourself — so just like the gym, you don’t quit after a week, because you “Can’t handle it,” or “It doesn’t fit in my schedule (gym-wise),” or honestly, maybe that method isn’t working for you. Whether you believe in God or not, I believe that God put us on this earth with great intentions, and he wouldn’t give us anything we can’t handle. If something or someone is really important to you, you will make time in your schedule for it, no matter how busy you are. We’re all busy. I get it.

I created a video last year on my YouTube channel, naming it my, “2016 New Year’s Resolutions.” I had about sixteen or seventeen resolutions. That’s a lot. I wanted to accomplish a lot of those, but I definitely did not complete a majority of them. Why? I didn’t break down my resolutions as much as I should have. I explained them, and how I would approach them, but looking back, I really don’t think I broke them down to the fullest. Reading the bible, for example, I said that I would read it every day, which I did the first month and a half, and then for whatever reason, I gave up. It was like I wanted to read it, but I had other things distracting me. Last year I was single, and I was single from my senior year of high school to this past fall semester in the middle of October (we are juniors in college) when my best friend asked me out, and it’s been amazing since. Because I was single for a few years and including the Spring 2016 semester, I letBOYS get in the way of me reaching out and reading God’s word. Wow. I can’t believe that just came out of my mouth. That doesn’t sound like me. That’s literally throwing out a relationship with someone who created you and put you on this earth, and me saying, “I can’t read the bible right now because I’m texting this guy.” REALLY? Who even was I during that semester. I was going through a weird funk that entire semester, I can tell you that much. But what I am trying to say here is that whether a resolution of yours is reading the bible, or something else, do not make up excuses. Do not let stupid things distract you.

Now I don’t have a specific number count of the resolutions I have. After last year with having sixteen or seventeen resolutions, that felt like too much pressure on me. It stressed me out. “I have to do this every single day or else I’ll become a failure and have to wait until next year to start all over again.” That is something that pretty much went through my head a lot in 2016. Not fun. This year of 2017, I have truly accepted that there will be days that aren’t filled with sunshine all day long, and I’m not talking about the weather. It took me years to finally realize that. I realized that it’s life. “Everything happens for a reason.” The one non-bible verse that I swear by. So we’re currently on the 6th day of the new year, and I’ve already had some interesting experiences. By interesting I mean, I’ve already experienced not-so-great situations. Guess what? I’m accepting it. By accepting it, it is not stressing me out, and even though I have plans of what to do during this month and on, I’m just going with the flow. Yeah, I’ll admit that I’ll think about it at random times during the day, but that’s just how my mind is, and since I can control how I feel, I can get myself to stop thinking about it. I am not going to stress myself out by situations that are currently happening, or happened in the past. It’s ok to let yourself be sad or upset with someone or something in the beginning, but don’t let that ruin you forever. It’s not worth it. They’re not worth it. I have to say that I’ve been better at that, and when I think about something in the past that either I did, someone did to me, whatever it may be, I say to myself, “Jordan, f*****g chill.” And after that, I move on with my life. Yup, I do say that swear. I can be fine with or without the swear, I’ve said it both ways, but I use the swear if my anxiety is making the past or current situation worse, because I am overthinking it. It’s definitely helping a lot.

Alright, enough rambling, now onto my actual resolutions of 2017. I will break down each resolution to you of how I plan to approach them, and what I would do if I forgot to do it, or whatever reason it may be. I am certainly not going to punish myself for doing so.

2017 Resolutions:

Continue the habit of saying, “I am happy today!” when I wake up in the morning. I have been doing this since last year starting of 2016, and I believe that that has helped me the most with getting through my days. I’m not gonna lie, there were days where I just completely forgot to say it, or I randomly remembered about it during the day –and I still said it. If I completely forgot to say it, it’s because I was with family or friends that day, and I already know that I am feeling happy by being with them, and God knows that too. So yes, in the past I had said, “OMG I can’t believe I forgot to say it!” Then I thought about it and realized that God knows I was happy, and I know that I was happy, so it’s not a big deal. Don’t beat yourself up when it comes to those things.

Every night in a notebook or in the notes app of my phone, write however many things I am grateful for that day. I do this at night, that way anything that happened during the day, I can reflect on that, and really think about how I handled situations, good and bad. Most of the time it takes just one thing or person to make me realize how grateful I am for someone or something else, it depends on the situation though. I can definitely tell you that my boyfriend, Kevin, is always at the top of that list, and family and friends are almost always on there too. I could write blog posts on Kevin, my family, and my friends all separately. (Stay tuned for that in the future maybe)

Eat healthier foods than I normally do, but if I don’t every day, it’s ok, let myself eat what I want. Once I thought about this broken-down resolution, I became more aware of how I eat, but I don’t beat myself up for it. I am a thin young adult, and even in high school, I had always opted for healthier options than others. I am not a chip person, unless they are tortilla chips. Those to me are the healthier chips. I don’t eat fries that often, I opt usually for sweet potato fries. I don’t eat fast food. The other day, I started my day off with a bagel, and then something else after that. Not the healthiest, but I wanted to eat it, and I would say a bagel is healthier than other items like a sugary cereal for example. Bagels fill me up and I love them, so I am going to continue eating them. That same day, I really wanted to eat an apple, and I did. It gave me more energy, like the peppermint tea I drank earlier as well. Please please please do not beat yourself up for the foods you put in your body. Now I can say that putting super junky foods is definitely not the way to a healthier lifestyle, but if you like it, do what you want, it’s your body. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE CARBS…BUT carbs make me have lower energy (Italy should be interesting). I eat more carbs when I am at home more than I do at school. Also, do not deprive yourself from chocolate. That’s a girl’s best friend right there. Chocolate is actually good for you, dark chocolate specifically, but I am not a fan of it. Chocolate has de-stressing purposes, and I will say this does work, if you eat chocolate before any sort of test, you will do better on it. I don’t know about you, but I am going to continue eating what I want to eat, and eat that chocolate from time to time. Also because I got a lot of it in my stocking.

Work on butt and ab exercises every day, it doesn’t matter the time of day. When I do the ab and butt workouts, do 1 set of each exercise only, and for each exercise, do 17 reps (because it’s 2017!). I hope that makes sense. I just figured that doing 17 reps per exercise is enough for me to be satisfied, and I also don’t want to overwork myself. Everyone is different, so be mindful of how everyone chooses to exercise.

I wouldn’t say I am a messy person, I am just a young woman with a lot of stuff aka clothing. With that being said, organize clothing areas when I can, and do not leave stuff lying around. Not just clothing, but organize different areas of my bedroom when I can. I cannot tell you how many times my Mom and I have donated clothing items and non-clothing items that mostly came from my room over the years to Big Brothers & Big Sisters (or Salvation Army). Big Sisters (for short) come pretty often during the year to our house to pick up garbage bags full of stuff. Trust me, I know if I had less, I wouldn’t have the problem of having messy areas. I will obviously keep the clothing, but once in awhile, I go into purge-mode with clothing and non-clothing items. It feels great to donate items to people who need things more than I do. So, I will not get upset with myself if I don’t clean out this certain area by a specific time.

Now I don’t think I have any more regular resolutions, but I definitely have travel goals for when I go abroad. I will definitely be posting in the next two weeks a lot of about travel goals, what my packing list looks like, etc. I will also create videos of these ideas on my channel, because I think that can help out anyone who is taking a semester abroad soon, not just to my location, or anyone who likes to travel often and they need inspiration. Stay tuned!

Instead of having sixteen or seventeen resolutions that I know I won’t complete well, I created five broken-down ones, ones that I will actually go through with. I wanted to share these with you to just inspire you and to tell you to create more realistic resolutions that fit YOU best. Just because a celebrity is doing this thing, doesn’t mean you automatically have to, unless you want to try it out, but don’t put too much pressure on yourself to complete it often. I know this turned out to be a longer post, but I really hope that it helped and inspired you to really look at your resolutions and break them down to the fullest if you didn’t already do so. Remember, you are not a failure if you can’t complete something in a specific time period. Do not beat yourself up for things because that clearly won’t make your resolutions fun anymore, and you’ll become stressed out. To end this on a more positive note, I hope you are having a great year so far, and I hope you have a wonderful day!